I guess I should have seen this coming. I can hear the common sayings repeated in my head: “you get what you pay for”, “buyer beware”, “it can never happen to me”. Let’s just say that hopefully after today, I will never deal with The Picture People and their partner Zazzle.com again. I say hopefully because I want to be sure we get our calendar that we ordered, before I say never. They still have one last chance to screw up.
This all started when we decided to take some portrait photos of Brandon to get photos of him at various points in his infancy. I originally considered taking “studio” photos of him on my own, but of course I dont have a studio, lights, etc., and we didnt want to spend a small fortune on a professional photographer. So we decided on the dreaded mall store studio,the Picture People. We first took him there in August of 2006. We thought this would be a one time occasion, but of course they marketed this great deal where if you join their Picture Club for a mere $40, you would get a free 8X10 at each of your next 3 sittings. Subsequently, we returned there for holiday family photos in December, and another sitting in July 2007. In December of 2006, some brilliant minds decided that they should switch computer systems and software in the heart of their busiest time. Of course, we had some trouble getting our photos selected in the store, and then never received the link required to retrieve the photos online. After a few months, while we were passing by during a mall trip, we asked them if they could resend the link. Of course they say sure thing, an email will be sent within 24hrs (I’ve recently learned that this must be something engrained in their minds and repeated constantly, as I’ve probably now heard it about 20 times). 3 or 4 months later we go in to have one more sitting before our photo club membership expires, and ask again if they can give us the link to our December photos. They check if they can find the photos in the actual store, but couldn’t. The rep that we worked with told us to contact the main customer service number and insisted that we have to be persistent (that’s not very reassuring already), and that I have to contact them during normal business hours.
Day 1: So I start Monday, July 30, to call the customer service dept. It takes 10 minutes on hold to get someone to answer, and they say that they see the sitting in their records and of course will transfer the photos to the website and an email will be sent within 24hrs. Of course, nothing happens. ]
Day 2: I call back the next day, around the same time. They say that there must be an issue with their T1 connection and that the photos will be sent within 24hrs, that it may just take longer because they have large files constantly being sent to the server. Another 24hrs, no response.
Day 3: I call back and they tell me that they need to contact the studio to find out what happened, and tell me that someone at the store is looking into it and will get back to me. I dont hear anything for the rest of the day.
Day 4: I call on Thursday. I’m not normally this persistent, well probably, but mainly because we wanted to maximize our membership before it expired, and now, I really just wanted an answer. So the corporate office (actually Zazzle.com, I really dont know who runs the asylum), tells me that I need to contact the store and that it is an issue that needs to be dealt with at the specific studio. I call the studio, and they say they will look into it. I wait for most of the day to hear back from them, when I dont, I call them in the afternoon. The guy that I had been dealing with tells me, “I’ll check” which means, he hadnt tried all day, and that it only took the amount of time that I was on the phone with him to find out an answer. He gives me some blabble about how they changed servers at the time we had the sitting, that photos that should have been uploaded never were, and never admitted to saying our photos were lost. I had to ask him directly, “are our photos lost?”. He answers “apparently, it looks that way,” (never a straight answer). I ask him, “so what’s the next step? What can you do about this?” He replies, “you’ll have to talk to customer service.”
Day 5: I contact the customer service reps from the corporate number because at this point I feel the need to be compensated. I get forwarded to a manager’s voice mail, and leave a message that I’d like to speak to them. Amazingly, I do get a call back from them within a few hours, and I explain the whole situation. I wanted to hear her explanation as to why it took 4 days to find out that our photos were gone. She had none. She pretty much glossed it over. She frankly apologized for the fact that our photos were lost, and she said it was the studio’s fault. They had a time frame as to when photos needed to be submitted to the new servers, and that they missed the deadline. It was too late for me to care who was to blame, but later on I get a different explanation from the manager at the studio, that once photos appear on their store computers for us to order prints the same day, they are considered uploaded/uploading to the servers, and that Zazzle deleted them. I asked her to refund the money for the prints that we received for the December sitting. I explained to her that the photos were useless to me w/o access to the digital files for reprints. She says, “well you can scan the photos, or we can scan them here for you. and we can offer you another year of Picture Club membership for free.” I totally lost it. I told her, “why the heck would I want another year of something that has been so messed up with in the first place. Do you really expect me to return when all of this is over?” She replies, “well what do you want?” I say, “how bout 1000 free 8×10’s?” She went quiet for about ten seconds, and asked me if i was serious. I said, “you telling me that I can get another year of membership is infuriating, and that it’s as ridiculous as me asking for 1000 free photos. You lost our files!” She apologized again, and asked me again what I wanted. I told her I wanted our photos and the membership refunded. I told her again, that I could scan the photos but they’re never going to match the digital files in quality, and that the photos that we printed that were 5X7’s or wallets wouldn’t scan well enough to make enlargements. Not to mention, several other photos that were taken, that we didn’t print at the time, were lost. She said that there was nothing that she could do about the photos that we received, but that she could refund our club membership of $40. “but, you’ll have to contact the store to do it.”
After lunch I call the store to speak to the manager. I told him that my photos were lost, and that I wanted to return my photos and get my membership refunded. First he said, “did you call customer service?” I was floored. Then he states, “I can’t refund you for the photos. Normally you have 90 days, but after that you can’t. You’ve had the photos, and are enjoying them on the wall, so there isn’t anything I can do about that. I have to check about the membership.” I reminded him that everywhere you look it says “Satisfaction Guaranteed”, which really means if you’re unhappy you can go back for another sitting and take more photos (cause that costs them nothing). So he looks up our account and realizes that we are almost at the expiration date for our membership, and that we have obtained $40 worth of free prints. He tells us that he has to check with his boss to see if he can issue the refund. He finds out that he can’t, from I assume the district manager, and tells me, “if I were to issue you a refund for the club membership of $40, then you would owe $40 for the free prints that you received.” I felt like driving straight to the store right then. I told him I spoke with customer service and this is what they told me. He said he couldn’t do anything since his boss already said no. I called customer service yet another time, and they said they would contact the store. 5 minutes later I get a call from the manager asking for a credit card number to issue the refund, without any sort of apology.
You thought this was over, but oh no. It never is. After accepting the fact that those photos were lost, we had about 6 days to use up the remaining coupon credits for our membership. So, on Friday evening, August 3rd, Robyn decided to make a calendar with photos the sittings that hadn’t been lost (so we assumed). She spent 2 hours getting the calendar laid out the way she wanted it and submitted the order. She tried to use the coupon code that we received and found out that it didnt work. Well, this meant another call to customer service.
Day 6: This was actually a mild day dealing with the customer service rep. He stated that if an order was canceled and a coupon had been used, the coupon still becomes invalid. (we had tried to order a calendar months ago that got canceled because they stopped making them). So he simply replaced the code with a new one.
Day 7: It is Tuesday, August 7th, we think everything is in the works with the calendar. Robyn get’s an email from Zazzle. Ill just let you read it:
Dear SmileStore Customer:
Thank you for your business and for your recent order on our
SmileStore.
To serve our customers better, we recently transitioned our online
business to a new partner, but have been unfortunately experiencing
start-up problems with migrating high-resolution images from previous customer
accounts to our new website. In the process, we apologize and must
inform you that we are unable to process order 131-23115691-8467135 which
you placed on 8/3/2007 at the SmileStore as your older images are no
longer stored on the website. You will not be charged for this order.
We sincerely apologize for this unfortunate circumstance and can assure
you that the issue has been resolved. All of your future sittings will
be saved in your current account. Please know that we are continuing
to work with our partner to better the online experience for our
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We value your business and hope that you will give us another
opportunity to serve you again soon. Please bring in this email to your local
Picture People studio and receive 25% off your in-studio portrait and
merchandise purchase. This is a special purchase meant especially for you,
and is not transferable.
Discount Offer – Offer valid only for color portraits, 10×13 or smaller
and on in-studio merchandise. Not valid on existing orders, reprints,
gift cards or portrait club memberships. Offer valid in-studio only.
Offer not valid online or on special orders. Select styles only.
Merchandise varies by studio. While supplies last. Coupon cannot be used in
combination with this or any other offer and must be presented at time of
sitting/purchase. Limit one coupon redemption (this or similar offer)
per person (individually and/or as part of a family/group). Offer
expires 12/31/07.
Email Address:
Coupon Code: MECQA
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to serving
you.
Sincerely,
The SmileStore Team
The Picture People
No Sitting Fees, Ever
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Portraits in One Hour
1-800-341-HOUR
www.picturepeople.com
Day 7: I call customer service once again to find out what happened, and a different rep tells me that they only have the thumbnail images, and the store holds the larger files. She calls the store to find out if they have it, but tells me the asst. manager is busy at the moment and will get back to me. With great pessimism, I call myself and he states that he will look into it. I wait till 8pm w/o a call. I call the store back and the manager answers. He says he will call the asst. manager on his cell phone cause he doesn’t want to interfere with whatever he may have already done. Of course no answer and I have to wait til tomorrow.
Day 8: I call the store, and the asst. manager hasn’t arrived during the time that I normally get a hold of him. We are now buddies of course. I wait ’til later in the afternoon, and call back. He answers, and says “hold on, let me check, we sort of had an emergency yesterday (again, it takes him the time that I am on the phone with him to get an answer).” He’s found our photos, and says it will take 24hrs to get them uploaded, and we will get an email with the link. Where have I heard that one?
Day 8: Today, by the way. I call customer service for presumably the last time. I needed to find out whether the calendar order was still there so that we didnt have to spend another 2 hours redoing it. The person I spoke with, with just an explanation of the situation, and without telling her my name, says, “I spoke to you yesterday.” She automatically assumed that I was going to argue about our missing photos, but I told her what I needed. By the way, I asked to speak to the manager yesterday but never heard back. She told us that we have to replace the low res files with the high res files, essentially having to redo the entire order. And of course, we would need a new coupon code because the others were invalid. As of 10am this morning, the order was completed and we will wait to see if it ever arrives. If it does, I am through with them.
I’m not sure you’ll need a summary of how I feel after this whole ordeal, but I’m sure I’ll vent about it for a while. So, keep your eyes open as I may revise this post a few more times.